Social Niceness

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I was having a conversation about social niceness and consideration for others with my semi-NT roommate this morning (he claims to have been HFA at one point but to have taught himself to be more NT), and it has me thinking about the differences between how I perceive the way social interactions should go – which may or may not be the same as how other ASers perceive how they should go – and how the NTs around me perceive how they should go. I am very utilitarian when it comes to individual happiness and social interaction. There are certain things which make me happy or give me pleasure and other things that do not make me so happy or make me unhappy. There are some things that make me happy, like playing a computer game or reading, that I can do by myself and don't really see any need to involve another person in. There are other things, certain team activities or large projects, that do require other people and so in those cases I may involve other people. In all things, I try to maximize total utility. If something will cause me some small discomfort, and make someone else very happy, then I should do that.

Similarly, if something will cause someone else some small discomfort, and cause me a great deal of pleasure, then I think I should do that as well. One issue I have in dealing with NTs in this manner is that a lot of their reaction in such an exchange seems to do with whether or how I ask about this. For example, my roommate has bought a large number of eggs and put them in our shared fridge. He has made it clear he intends them for everyone to use, so we don't all have to buy eggs separately. He however, expressed some annoyance with me that I used some of these eggs to make my breakfast while he was sitting nearby, and I didn't ask him about them. Apparently I had denied him an opportunity to be gracious in giving me his eggs for my breakfast. I find this rather silly. To me, the act of giving was in putting the eggs in the fridge in the first place. If I buy some food for the house, once I have made it clear that was my intent, and put them in the public space, I no longer consider it my food; it is now the community's food. This apparently was not a view he shared. To him the distinction seemed to be the interpersonal contact in personally presenting something of his to someone else for their use. This seems, in the more general sense to be the case of NTs wanting you to ask before you use something of theirs, even if you both know there's no reason for them to say no and he's just going to say yes anyway. I could understand this from the utilitarian standpoint if you might have some reason you don't want something used, or you want to know where something of yours is, but the niceness, graciousness aspect seems weird to me.

Also, I am rather uncomfortable asking people for favors, and I am very uncomfortable asking the same question multiple times. If someone gives me permission to use something of theirs once, and especially if it isn't an especially big thing, and I know there's no reason to deny it in the future, I tend to assume I have permission to use it again, in a reasonable manner, provided I don't completely monopolize it. The alternative is me seeking this person out and asking permission whenever I want one egg for breakfast, and they also seem to find this annoying when I am constantly asking them. I find this whole "opportunity to be gracious" thing disturbing on a number of levels. It strikes me as some sort of personal glorification. I tend to think when you give something or do something nice, you should make as little a deal of it as possible. My ideal is to put food in completely anonymously, and have no one know I did it, to clean when nobody's looking, to try and do my own good deeds as discreetly as possible. I start to feel uncomfortable when people give me praise and accolades for doing good things. Having to ask someone for permission to use something they ostensibly put in for everyone anyway, or making sure it is known when I do something nice, even just having to say thank you, strikes me as them saying "I did something good! Make sure you all come and acknowledge my glory!" Nice things should be things that just happen, they shouldn't be something you have to make a big deal about.

In a similar utilitarian vein, if someone does something nice for me, something that caused them a great deal of discomfort and only delivered me a small amount of happiness, I would think that that person had done something rather silly. For example, while I was away over Thanksgiving, a friend of mine took it upon herself to clean up my desk - which was perpetually in a state of extreme mess and disorder - and organized it and made it look all nice and left me a little note saying happy Thanksgiving. Now this was very nice of her, and it was very nice having a clean desk, I am grateful for her doing this, but me being me, it didn't stay clean for very long, and soon returned to its prior state of messiness. Now, while I liked the little bit of time I had a clean desk, if I really cared that much about it, I would have taken the time to do it myself. I am sure my friend went to a lot of effort cleaning it, but I find it difficult to feel any great amount of gratitude for these sorts of gestures, that while well meaning, do not accomplish enough to justify the effort put into them. I tend to judge another person's actions by their effect, not their intent, and so things like these don't seem all that great to me. This is probably why I have a difficult time maintaining friendships, as NTs expect me to pick up on their intent, and show proper gratitude when they do things for me, and to do things for them as well, even when they are perfectly capable of doing these things themselves, and there's no real reason for me to do it instead of them. It comes across as selfish, and perhaps it is, but it runs both ways. I usually do the things I can for myself and only ask for help when absolutely necessary. I tend to expect similar behaviors from others, and don't offer help unless I see that they really need it.

What does everyone think of this? I would like to hear perspectives from both NT and AS. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do I sound totally right/totally wrong? Thoughts?

Your way of seeing things seems completely reasonable to me. This egg borrowing business seems rather complicated. I think in that situation I would end up just buying and using my own - saves all the asking, assuming, mutual self congratulation etc.

That is what I usually do as well, as it saves all the social interaction associated with sharing things. At the same time though, it is less efficient to do it that way, it takes up more space in the fridge, costs more, and I don't usually eat that many eggs and there's a good chance they will go bad by the time I get around to eating all of them. The simplest thing, if you have a house where several people live and eat eggs at an unpredictable rate is just to have some community eggs, but not involve all this self-conglaturation crap.

Well you are probably right. Back when I did live in shared houses I used to have a food obsession - everything I ate was planned a week in advance and there would be no spare eggs (I hate wasting things, so I would plan to use the whole pack if I bought some). Someone borrowing my food would have caused me a lot of problems and I'd have probably made a bit of a scene, particularly as I didn't have much money then (luckily my housemates were quite happy with us all keeping seperate food and eating seperately).

However, I think nowadays (a bit more flexible about food) I would still buy all my own stuff, but if I had a bit extra I'd put a note on it, or let people know what was spare (and not expect to be asked, but be happy to see whatever it was used up), and similarly I might ask if I wanted to borrow something small of someone else's, but this would be a rare event as I'm pretty organised. I think even now I would find it hard to have community food, particularly since I don't often use things that most people would use regularly like eggs, milk, butter, bread, tea etc. I have a vague memory that my housemates may have had a kitty for this type of thing, but I opted out.

I agree absolutely that egg ordeal illerstrates why I don't take things I don't own even if some said that it is communal as people are seldom steadfast in their decision even if they claim otherwise

I certainly understand your point of view and react similarly in most cases. All that "social dance" about the eggs seems absurd to me and I do believe it's mostly about people wanting to feel go about themselves.

I don't ask for favors either - I don't feel comfortable about it, I'm not very good at conventionally expressing gratitude and I don't like to have debts.

It took me years to understand at a certain level how people's intentions can be important, but it still makes no difference to the way I feel.

You seem to have enough common sense to deal with these situations - I don't think I would be very good at sharing a flat.

[quote="Sallamandrin]It took me years to understand at a certain level how people's intentions can be important, but it still makes no difference to the way I feel. [/quote] I think intentions are important inasmuch as they can be predictors of future actions. If someone acts with good intent, that is an indicator that they may act with good intent in future, and may, if properly educated produce good results. At the same time, acting with good intent, itself is not automatically positive. I am supposed to feel moved when someone does some work for me, causes themselves some discomfort, to do something that has little or no meaning for me? No, they should be able to pick something that actually has some value for me, otherwise they must not know me very well. If they ask, I'm sure I can find something more useful for them to do.

[quote="Sallamandrin]You seem to have enough common sense to deal with these situations - I don't think I would be very good at sharing a flat.[/quote]I have barely enough common sense. I have carved out my own little space in the house that I stick too and don't like other people interfering with. I kind of know my roommates already, which helps. I have had a lot of difficulty in the past sharing living spaces with people I don't really know. For some reason it doesn't quite seem to be bothering me as much this time.